Research Catalogue

Is it possible to conceive of a form of musical criticism that reflects the very subject(s) it attempts to mobilise? To embrace the fluid ontologies of music while limiting the ossifying nature of linguistic criticism? An Erotics of Art was a project I ran in 2016 to try and create such an art form. Myself and a select few artists, writers and musicians were asked to create "responses" to musical works of their choice. These responses had to be created in real-time, as they listened. These are my submissions. Because of my grounding, the majority of each response is text based (I am loathe to say linguistic...) but occasionally text fails me. I stretch it to what I saw as its intelligible limit at the time, and used images and free-drawing. The resulting pieces are a searing autoethnographic matrix of my situation at the time, as provoked by these musics. The inspiration came from both Susan Sontag, from whom I clearly ape the name of the series, and an old Downbeat Magazine section called "Blindfold Test". Examples are easily found. They may seem discursive but rest assured: I am talking about the music itself and nothing else.

Can you play in time and out of time? What is the drummer's role in a band setting? What are the philosophies of performance innate when sampling, when contrafacting, quoting or manipulating other people's work? How is Chris Dave "the most dangerous drummer on the planet"? The paper and performance attempt to answer these questions through a stylistic analysis and evaluation of a drum performance of Chris Dave, unpacking his innovative and conceptual reinvention of drum-set performance.

* This is a product of a series of performances, educational projects and ruminations in 2015-6. It was improvised and is ever incomplete. To begin with a general overview, refer to the "Parallels" page. Otherwise, happy travels. It is a ludic and ergodic text and is not to be considered definitive. Each reading should deepen each previous, and be reliant upon postexpectant and preexisting readings. Consequently, in a formal sense, it owes much to Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Braxton's Tri-Axium Writings. Sections over- and under-lap, alluding freely within and without themselves. There is no correct method of engaging with it, nor a linear approach. "As we will have seen", many sections explain themselves only through others. It is a philosophical matrix, a web contingent upon all strands and - most crucially of all - an investment of the Reader's sense of Self into the work. Like a metaphor, the Reader must place themselves within the work as the absent tenor or vehicle relevant to each piece (leaning on Graham Harman and Jose Ortega y Gasset). In other words, it is an attempt - a nobly failing attempt - to ensure the Reader - the audience - is as much a creator as the writer. * Not so very long ago a community of people came together and, after a lengthy and luxurious dinner, after which the group found their prepared topics of conversation too incendiary, fetid or dull to suit the evening, decided to invent Art. During the protracted debates that followed, according to the comprehensive minutes of the gathering, Art’s proportions and dispensations were agreed upon: Art was to have no place within quotidian daily life or public policy; it was to be devoid of both educational merit or impetus; it was to arouse emotion but never too strikingly; and was to be deemed the final topic of conversation at dinner, after its natural locutory progenitors science and politics. Feeling pleased, the group dispersed. (It is worth perhaps parenthetically noting that the following morning the host of the party – nursing a fiercely raging headache – found and read over the proposal prior to its distribution. After a while he discovered he disagreed with the entire document and, throwing into the fire, rewrote it entirely. Since this was all done in secret and because his friends are that particular type of people, he stills receives no credit whatsoever in the publication of the document.)

An introduction to and for myself as an attempt to more clearly define what I am calling Optimistic Criticism. Frustrated with limited teleological analysis in any form, this evolving, never finished exposition is a postcard of my critical perspective. More postcards will be sent when I travel to different shores, but my home berth will be here.